Good Works Essential

Again, baptism is a work of man, not a work of God--just like prayer, witnessing, etc. They are works. Calling on the name of the Lord in faith on the basis of his shed blood is the only requirement for salvation. And that can happen one day, or one year, or ten years before salvation. Ask Steaver about his personal testimony.

 

I have never seen God baptize anyone. You must be delusional.
What happens when someone is baptized? They get wet! And that is all.
I received Christ two years previous to my baptism. At that time I received forgiveness of sins, eternal life, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, made a part of the family of God, became His child, was born again, and received many other benefits from the Father.
Baptism simply made me wet. It was done in obedience to Christ as the first step of obedience in the Christian life. In my life it was delayed for lack of teaching. I was not saved in a Baptist church.

 

It doesn't matter what your attitude toward me is.
What matters is your theology. Right now it parallels the RCC and even the Hindus. Even the Hindus believe that water washes away sin, and you believe that same pagan belief. Water cannot wash away sin, only the blood of Christ can do that.

You believe that forgiveness of sins follows baptism. That is what you testified. It cannot and there is no teaching in the Bible that testifies to that. In fact it is a heretical teaching. Forgiveness of sins precedes baptism. Baptism always follows forgiveness of sins. If baptism precedes it, then you have a works salvation. There is no other way to look at it.

 

Just because there are "good works"(Eph. 2:10) and "works of righteousness" (Tit. 3:5) does not change the fact they are still "works" and are in opposition to grace in regeneration as that is a work of CREATION by God alone. That is what Paul is saying in Ephesians 2:10 that there must be a creative work by God prior to "good works" which God has ordained that we should walk in. First the true must be made good before it can bring forth good fruits or else it is still a bad tree and will bring forth bad fruits.

Our "walk" has to do with our life of good works. We are "His WORKmanship created in Christ Jesus UNTO good works..." Thus baptism follows regeneration rather than is instrumental with regeneration.

You cannot deny that baptism is a "good" as Jesus described the administration of it in fulfilling "all righteousness" and thus a righteous work.

 

By your definition of unmeritorious works then everything we PARTICIPATE with God in from baptism to the last "good" or gracious work we do before death is the grace of God and not of works, Right?

Why is it then that Paul illustrates justifying faith which is of grace (Rom. 4:16) as something Abraham DID NOT PARTICPATE WITH GOD IN but as something that simply embraced the promise of God as the object of faith dependent upon God's power alone to obtain the promise (Rom. 4:21)?

Did not God PURPOSELY wait until the natural reproduction capabilities of Abraham and Sarah were "dead" so they could not PARTICIPATE WITH GOD as they had attempted to do with the birth of Ishmael????

Is not this the illustration Paul purposely uses to directly apply to our justification by faith?

21 And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
22 And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.
23 ¶ Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;
24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;
25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

Isn't the direct definition in Romans 4:21 exactly what Paul means as "believe on him" in verse 24? Did not Abraham simply have to REST their faith on God's power to fulfill God's promise WITHOUT any assistance or participation on their part to have Isaac?

Isn't what you are teaching as justification EXACTLY parallels with their belief that God would provide them a son moved by acting in response to that faith in ASSISTING God or PARTICIPATNG with God in the birth of Ishmael? God had to give life for Ishmael to be born and thus God was working with them in the birth of Ishmael.

 

I doubt very much that you will be able to make a Biblical case for this statement.

 

Have you ever seen God baptize anyone?

 

How do you know this? How do you that God is not mysteriously at work in that person, accomplishing something over and above their simply "getting wet"?

 

1. I know from the Word of God.
2. I know because I am not prone to illogical fallacies.
One cannot make their arguments from silence.

 

There is, of course, a perfectly way to agree with Paul that final salvation is based on good works, yet that one's salvation is a gift of pure grace.

If the works that ultimately procure your salvation are the works of the Holy Spirit, then these works are a "gift", not something you "earn".

So it is simply mistaken to set the concept of "grace" against the concept of "good works" as if one cannot embrace both "salvation by grace" and "salvation by good works".

Paul certainly embraced both these concepts.

 

You are not answering the question. So I will ask again:

How do you know this? How do you that God is not mysteriously at work in that person, accomplishing something over and above their simply "getting wet"?

The fact that there may be no "one verse" that asserts that God is at work in baptism is not an argument that He is not.

 

I think that people need to be open to the possibility that they are thinking of baptism the wrong way. I wonder whether people are bringing an unexamined assumption into this debate. And that is the assumption that baptism is a purely symbollic act.

But if you are open to the possiblity that God is at work in baptism, then the issues are different. Baptism can be an event where God acts, independent of what we understand.

Remember the "history" of baptism in the redemption story. Baptism, rather obviously, is a re-enactment of the Red Sea crossing - the Israelites pass from slavery to freedom through the waters of the Red Sea, foreshadowing the same transition in baptism.

Did every man-jack of the Israelites, children included, understand what was going on when they were led across the dry bed of the Red Sea? Of course not. But God was redeeming them nonetheless.

I believe that God is indeed at work in baptism. It is not just a symbolic act reflecting what the person understands about "his salvation".

 

Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

The entire context of Eph.2:8-10 speak of salvation by grace. That is its main theme. "For by grace are ye saved."
Not until after salvation is thoroughly explained in verses 8 and 9 does Paul give his conclusion in verse 10, which is addressed to the work of a Christian, not an unsaved man. "WE" are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works. This has nothing to do with salvation by works, but rather after salvation the Christian does good works because he has been saved. Salvation has already been described in verses 8 and 9. The good works are our service as a Christian in verse 10.
In verse 9 he specifically says that salvation is "not of works".

Titus 3:5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
--There are no works involved here either. We are saved only according to his mercy--by the washing of regeneration. It is not by works of righteousness. Neither passage involves works.

 

"I believe". That is an opinion, which you are entitled to. But it is completely unsubstantiated in Scripture.

 

I suggest that you misunderstand Ephesians 2:8-9. It is not a denial of salvation by "good works", it is a denial of salvation is only available to those who do the works of the Law of Moses, that is, Jews.

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9not as a result of works, so that (Y)no one may boast.

In verse 9, Paul is denying the salvific power of doing the works of the Law of Moses, and not the more general category of “good works”.

A point of method: It simply will not do to declare up front that Paul is talking about good works here – that begs the question. No, the fair-minded reader needs to ask which of the following views makes more sense given both the local context and the broader context of the whole letter:

1. The salvific power of doing good works is being denied;

2. The salvific power of doing the works of the Law of Moses is being denied.

Explanation 2 is the one that makes sense in light of what Paul goes on to say in verse 11 and following as well as what he says in Romans 3, where he makes it clear that, in respect to good works, the Jew and the Gentile are in the same boat.

Proceeding to an examination of Ephesians 2:11 and following, Paul uses the "therefore" to show us that he is now going to fill out the implications of his denial of salvation by “works”

Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.

Paul is clearly now talking about the Jew-Gentile divide, and how the actions of Jesus have brought Jew and Gentile together. Doing the works of the Law of Moses, of course, is what demarcates Jew from Gentile in terms of covenant membership and shuts the Gentile out of citizenship in Israel. Paul continues:

14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations

How much more clear could Paul be? What has divided the Jew from the Gentile and been the barrier? Good works? Obviously not, both Jew and Gentile are on “the same side” of any good works barrier (first 20 or so verses of Romans 3). It is doing the works of the Law of Moses, of course, that is the very thing that the Jew might otherwise boast in and which is now being declared to not be salvific.

 

I will probably dispute this later.

But let's be clear - you, equally, have provided no evidence at all to support your assertion that baptism is purely symbollic.

 

Romans 6:3,4 teaches us that it is a symbolic act.
One is baptized symbolizing their death to their old life to sin, and they come out of the water symbolizing their new life to Christ. It is symbolic. Nothing takes place inside. They aren't made any more holy. There is no transformation because of the water. The only thing that actually happens to them is that they get wet. It is a symbolic act of obedience done in obedience to the command of Christ.

 

I suggest that Romans 6 does not teach that baptism is a symbollic act. I do not see an actual argument here, merely a claim that baptism is symbolic. I will now make an actual case that this is not so.

In Romans 6, Paul asserts that baptism enacts a death - the death of the old nature, a nature that needs to be put to death so that the new life can take its place:

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life

For Jesus, the sequence was death on the cross and then resurrection to new life. Paul clearly has us dying in the act of baptism. Now to the extent that we understand repentence to be constitutive of the new life, it makes absolutely no sense to promote a model whereby we undertake the restorative journey of repentance and then enact our own death through baptism. That would have us putting our repentant "new nature" to death!

If we are following Paul's line of thinking, we understand the act of baptism as our sharing in Jesus' death (as we go down into the water) and emerging, like Christ, out the other side (as we are raised up out of the water). It is only after we have put the old self to death can we begin the process of repentance:

The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.

Now to drive the point home yet again. We know Paul likens baptism to our death. Who is dying? The old Adamic nature, of course! What does Paul say about the old Adamic nature? That is cannot submit to God. That is, it cannot repent.

Unless and until you have put the Adamic identity to death in baptism, you simply do not have capability to repent.